Participants: Morris Warrior Dash an 'incredibly disappointing' mess

Several participants in Saturday's annual Warrior Dash in Lewis County Park in Morristown say the event was mismanaged. The 2013 event is seen in this file photo.

(Tim Farrell/The Star-Ledger)

MORRIS TOWNSHIP — Participants in Saturday's Warrior Dash venting frustrations online and in conversations with NJ.com say the event was overcrowded and mismanaged, leaving them waiting in massive lines and waiting for shuttle bases that came late or never at all.

About 10,000 people climbed, crawled, swam and ran their way through 11 different obstacles in the 3.1 mile race at Lewis Morris Park, the third year the obstacle course marathon has been held in Morris Township.

But participants say that was enough to overwhelm the event — and for some, make it a miserable experience.

"You guys really did a bad job this year. The wait for the shuttle bus was ridiculous, water for the showers ran out and there were no timing chips?" Thomas McArdle wrote on the event's Facebook page. "Spartan, Tough Mudder and Rugged Maniac do a MUCH better job. Piss poor setup this year!"

Others said they waited 45 minutes or more to catch a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the event area — and some said they gave up and walked. Participants described 30-minute waits at the check-in tables and overcrowding on the actual race course.

"Agree with all these comments...we were unfortunate enough to have been signed up for a later heat...and we barely made it before the last one got off because it took over an hour just to get bibs and check our bags...really?!?!" Angela Silvia McQueen wrote. "Not to mention the bag check process was just a cluster, no one knew what was going on and over a 30 min wait EACH for both the first 2 obstacles? Insane. Way too many people on the course made for a Warrior Walk...not Dash as well."

She called the organization "incredibly disappointing,"

"Get your act together, there are plenty of other races that are able to execute flawlessly," she wrote.

Red Frog Events, the race's organizers, anticipated the crowd of about 10,000 participants for the race — which has seen a steady growth of 10 percent per year the inaugural Morristown race in 2011, according to spokeswoman Lauren King.

King acknowledged the negative comments, and said the company is regrouping "to evaluate feedback, logistics and on-site experience" in order to "determine how to ensure we don't run into similar issues in the future." The company has also been responding to commenters on its Facebook page, though some complained it wrote identical responses to various complaints.

Red Frog plans to bring the race back to New Jersey in 2015, but it's still to be determined whether it will be in the same location, King said.

"It's safe to say that the Warrior Dash was not as organized as it could have been. ... I've done both the Spartan Sprint and the Rugged Maniac this year, and both the parking and moving along from one obstacle to the next were much smoother at those events than at the Dash," participant Andersen Silva told NJ Advance Media in an email. "We still had fun, but we could've gotten there faster and finished the course more quickly if things had been done better."

Another racer Jordan Clauberg said the Dash "just wasn't a good experience."

"It was not planned out well enough." Clauberg, who did the Spartan Race earlier this year, said.

Clauberg said he and about a dozen other people lost helmet-mounted cameras or other gear during the last obstacle, a slide into a five-foot-deep pool.

He said he and others went to the pool after the race to retrieve the items, but were told "all the items people lost ... were thrown out" when crews drained the swimming pool of its water.

"Who throws out $4,000 to $5,000 worth of equipment?" he said.

When asked for a comment on the missing items, King said racers are "welcome to reach out to our customer experience team" who "can assist in determining if we have their item in a lost and found from the event."

"We decided offering a free registration is something we wanted to do to show we're dedicated to providing a better experience at their next race with us," King said.

In recent years, obstacle course races, such as the Warrior Dash, the Spartan Race and the Tough Mudder have exploded in popularity, with an estimated 3 million people participating in 2013 versus 50,000 in 2010, CNBC reported last month.